flap
n.— Note: Perhaps related to the noun meaning of flap, “a state of agitation; a panic.” «His face lit up when he talked about a “flap,” a term used to describe a large number of UFO reports, one March sometime in the late 1990s.» —“His eye is stuck on the sky” by Julia Spitz MetroWest Daily News (Framingham, Massachusetts) Oct. 7, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
The owner of a Berlin, Maryland, produce stand wants to know: When a customer is buying four ears of corn, should they say I have four corn or I have four ears of corn? Corn is a mass noun that can also be counted as a plural, just as we might say I...
Skip, a sailing enthusiast from Gainesville, Florida, has been pondering radio protocols, such as the distress signal mayday!, and sécurité, which announces any of various warnings. There’s also pan-pan, repeated three times, a call that...
My parent’s generation, young adults in WWII, called fussing over something “getting into a flap over” it. Perhaps derives from “flapdoodle”?
Perhaps. You’re ahead of my note-adding, but I’ll add one to this catchword shortly.